Thinking further on the design for the Deimos mission. This design looks superior to the one being considered up to this point. From this point on, this will be the design. It is expandable, which means it can including a size proposed for the mining ship, plus even bigger ones that could house a city. This design was studied briefly at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, according to author---Jerome Wright.
This design has a docking port built right into the design. How convenient. Notice at the very center where the spokes radiate outward. That area can be pressurized and despun in order to accept cargo and passengers. The entire spacecraft will be spun in order to make the sail stiff and to provide artificial g for the astronauts in two pods near the center of the 860 meter in diameter disk.
In this latest iteration of a design, the two habs will each house one astronaut. They will be spun up to achieve about 1 lunar gravity. With the Iron Man suit, the astronaut will be lugging around a mass almost equal to what he usually has to lug around on Earth. The musculature will not suffer too much, hopefully. The crew might not look like bodybuilders when they get back.
I worked out some mass numbers using Wright's work. A Gemini type mass could be possible for the two habs. Actually if a radical design were to be employed, it may be possible to do better than even that.
See the spreadsheet below the picture.
 |
| From Space Sailing, p. 75 |
 |
| (corrected) |
Update:
Looks like all of this can go on one Falcon 9 launch, with plenty to spare. There's lots of room to grow with this concept.
Next
No comments:
Post a Comment